The Light of Mourning
by Kyasarin-Maarukeehii1
Summary: Mrs. Pevensie knew that there was something wrong with her children. She knew that there was a change, a shift. A veritable flip had occurred; the children she had sent to the countryside were not the same ones that had returned. Oneshot.


Hello everyone, and welcome to my first completed Narnia fanfiction! Though mostly inspired by a dream, this was also heavily inspired by "This Isn't Home" by Katako-chan. I will admit that I read that right before I dreamed a portion of the last bit of this story. All similarities to "This Isn't Home" are entirely my fault, and I apologize wholeheartedly. I'd like to think that I took a hint and made an instruction manual, but who knows.

**Disclaimer**: If Mr. Lewis knew what we'd done to his beloved characters, he'd probably have us all detained and flogged. Right now he's rolling in his grave. And so I own nothing of Narnia except my own ideas.

_The Light of Mourning_

Mrs. Pevensie knew that there was something wrong with her children. Observant, patient woman that she was, she knew that there was a change, a shift. A veritable flip had occurred and suddenly she knew that the children she had sent to the countryside were not the same ones that had returned.

Three months had passed since her four children had landed back on her doorstep, flying into her arms with even more enthusiasm than with which she flew into theirs. The boys had hugged her and kissed her cheeks, a peck on each side, before stepping back to allow their sisters full access to their mother. Hugs and kisses and tears were spread around. Mrs. Pevensie, in her happiness, did not immediately notice the change that had come over her children. She did not immediately see the looks that passed between them, the shadows and depths that haunted their eyes. She did not see it. She wished that she had.

As the first few days went by she wondered just what was different. The boys stood straighter, taller, and the girls held themselves with an air of grace they had not possessed before. Their time in the countryside, with Professor Kirke, turned them into the picture of maturity, she thought, and smiled at her suddenly very polite and obedient children. Still she missed the glances and the weighted stares, the whispered conversations and deep, heartfelt sighs.

Two weeks had passed before she really understood the magnitude of the change. She had walked past the boys' room with her arms full of laundry and heard her children speaking to one another in hushed, fervent tones. She listened intently, hoping to hear stories of the countryside that they had so far refused to speak much about, but instead heard what sounded like complete gibberish. It was lilting and smooth, the flow of water over slick stones, with just enough of a bite to keep it from sounding like music. Through the crack between the door and its frame she peered, checking that the children had not somehow gotten a radio upstairs and were listening to music. But no, Susan was waving her hands about vehemently, a look of passionate despair marring her pretty face. From her lips poured the sound of water and music, stronger than her older brother's answering tone.

She watched for but a moment before she was startled by Edmund, her youngest son, standing from the bed and, arms akimbo, glaring down his siblings.

"Stop it, you lot, or else Mother will hear us!" He admonished.

Peter sighed. "Mother won't understand what we're saying anyways, Ed. No one can understand what we're saying."

"I can hardly understand you, and I'm just as fluent." Lucy muttered, rubbing her forehead with the heal of her palm. She looked as distressed as her brothers and sister but had stayed silent throughout the heated exchanges.

"Sorry Lu, but it's safest for us to speak in the old tongue. We can't broadcast it, even though keeping it inside burns like fire." He laid his hand over his heart and smiled sadly at his youngest sister. "One day, maybe, we won't have to hide, but for now we do. We have no choice."

A tear slipped down Lucy's face, and her lips trembled. "But why, Peter, do we have to? Yes, I know, far too much has happened than could ever be explained, and who would believe us, but why try to hide it? He wouldn't want us to suffer, to hide Him, would He?"

Peter sighed again, a heart-weary sound, and looked each of his siblings in the eyes. "He would never tell us to keep Him a secret, but I think in the face of those who would laugh and jeer, call us liars and lock us away, where never would we speak of Him again, He would ask us to remain silent."

"I hate this." Lucy stamped her foot on the rug, crossing her arms over her chest and looking down, tears darkening her dress over her lap.

As brothers are wont to do, Peter stood and crossed the room to sit beside Lucy, pulling her into his arms as she began to cry. "I do too, Lucy, I do too."

Mrs. Pevensie pulled away from the door and straightened, her mind a tumult of questions and emotions. So this was what her children did, when they said they were going to read together. Maybe they did, maybe it was all a ruse, but for certain her children were hurting, and she knew not what had caused such terrible pain in the hearts of four young children.

Her first thought was to call the Professor and ask him what the matter was, what had upset her children so. Their countenance upon their arrival home had been nothing as it was now. They had smiled at her, genuinely, though now she recalled how deep their eyes had become, how wise. She had not noticed it before, but a weight had settled over each of her children's shoulders, and though it did not keep them down, it was a visible presence. They seemed to walk and talk with purpose, to pause before they acted, to bite back remarks and spiteful names before they could be uttered. They had gained restraint. They had gained dignity. In the midst of such maturity, such grace, they had also gained a pain that seemed to bleed into their very hearts.

In the end Mrs. Pevensie did not telephone the Professor. She wrote him a letter, a rather long one, explaining that she felt something must have happened, but that the children refused to tell her what was the matter. A week later she received a response that did little more than tell her that, in the old manor house with its sweeping lawns and cavernous rooms, the children had discovered themselves. He could not explain the change that had come over them any better than she, though she felt in his words and in his pen strokes a hesitancy, as if he knew exactly the cause of her children's grief and yet knew that he was in no way fit to alleviate it.

Days dragged into weeks and still Mrs. Pevensie would totter down the hall, arms full of the wash or boxes for the attic, and would hear the unmistakable sounds of a melodic lilt coming through the crack in the right-hand bedroom door. After a while she stopped pausing to listen. Nothing changed, after all, so why try? A language unknown was no better for solving her worries than a rock was to lightening a load. A time or two she heard plain English coming through the wooden barrier but it was always of trivial things, like books about knights and games that starred horses and mythical beasts.

She worried often, watched as her four children continued to lock themselves up every morning and every afternoon, watched as their friends came to visit and left shaking their heads, as confused as she at the sudden change. One day in particular, right after lunch, Edmund's best friend from the block over came around and asked to have a word with her dark-haired son. The boys went into the parlor and it was there that Mrs. Pevensie found them an hour later, deep in discussion.

"But Edmund, surely you'll want in on it!" the boy cried in a hushed voice, urgency laced through it.

Mrs. Pevensie leaned against the doorway but made sure to stay out of sight. In light of the children's recent woes, she thought nothing of eavesdropping. Maybe she should have, maybe it was alright. A mother's worry is often unjustified but Mrs. Pevensie knew, in the pit of her stomach, that something far more than she would ever be able to imagine was amiss.

Edmund cleared his throat and sighed. "Daniel, I've told you already. I'll have no part in it. I've better things to do than prank the poor woman."

Daniel, for that was the boy's name, grunted in exasperation. "You used to be game for that sort of sport, Ed. Did Peter beat it out of you while you were away, or what?"

"Nothing of the sort, Dan, I just grew a bit of sense. There are things that matter far more than pulling pranks and scaring professors, you know." Mrs. Pevensie heard a rustle of corduroy on cotton as Edmund stood. She backed away a step, but heard the room beyond the doorway still.

"You're so high and mighty now, are you? You think you're a big man?" Daniel's voice was edging on anger.

The air all but froze and a pause drew out before Edmund spoke, sending a shiver down his mother's spine. "You know nothing of what I think, Daniel. Hold your tongue lest you say something you'll later come to regret."

A quick rustle of fabric and footsteps sent Mrs. Pevensie flying from the doorway. She made to look casual, anything but as ruffled as she felt, and watched silently on as the boy ran from the parlor, yelling a slur over his shoulder at her son, still hidden beyond the doorway.

"You're a freak, Pevensie! Stay your side of the block!" And with a bang he was gone from the house, sending the floor shaking under her feet.

Mrs. Pevensie stood a moment longer in the hall. Something had happened, something of weight that even she felt settle over her like the thickest of fur cloaks. A low voice murmured from the parlor and she strained to listen, again straying closer to the parlor door.

"Aslan guide him lest he wander astray as I." She had not the notion to move before Edmund stood in the doorway, ramrod straight and eyes burning an unfamiliar gold, the colour of caramel. He started at the sight of her at the door, a broom in one hand and a dust cloth in the other. "Mother," He acknowledged before scooting away and up the stairs. She heard a door close a moment later with a soft click.

Had any of the children come down from their rooms in the next short while, they'd have found their mother sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. In her mind's eye she felt Edmund's gaze upon her, blazing gold as it had. She knew her son, and his eyes were the colour of the bark of the pine, or a finely polished wood. Never had they been any other colour, and never would they be. But they had been, and it frightened her even more to know that more had changed in her child than just his mannerisms. Somehow, as certain as the sun rises in the east, Edmund was not the same child she had sent away.

None of her children were.

It was six long months of worrying and waiting and watching her children do their chores and disappear for hours into their rooms to speak like water before their father returned home from the war. It was just a short visit, a stop-over on the way through to the next base. After hugging and kissing her husband Mrs. Pevensie stood back to observe the children. Susan and Lucy a kiss and a hug, a twirl through the air full of giggling and laughter, the boys each a firm handshake and a slap on the shoulder. Not so long ago the boys had looked down when their father spoke to them but in this moment their eyes were raised and their gazes firm on their father's face. Later the man would comment on how mature the children had become, and didn't their stay in the country turn out for the better?

Mrs. Pevensie agreed, but as she lay abed tears slipped from her eyes and raced toward her pillow. Nothing seemed to be getting better; in fact, everything was getting worse. More and more the children locked themselves away, making excuses that they had a book to read or a board game that they were eager to try out. She knew, though, that all the books in the house had been read many times over and every game had been played. The same music-filled voices came through the crack between the frame and the door as had every day since the children's return home, and only the day before had she realized the full extent of the children's despair.

As she was wont to do, Mrs. Pevensie was walking by the right-hand bedroom with a basket of laundry, neatly folded and ready to be put away in closets and drawers, but paused her step for a moment to linger outside the boys' room. So often now all that she heard of her children was the strange language they spoke to each other in, even when she was in the same room. A whispered question, obvious in inflection but obscured in all other ways, or an exclamation to one another. Never did they call their siblings by name when speaking in the "old tongue," as Peter had once called it. It was always a word like the ringing of a bell, or like the wind in the chimes. Today, though, names flew in the tiny bedroom.

"I can't take such abuses anymore!" Mrs. Pevensie peeked through the crack and spied Susan pacing the floor, her hands fisted in her skirt and her head bowed. "I am not a child, and I am not wont to be! Unless I have died, and surely I and you have not, we are still ourselves and thus cannot be in such a sorry state. You two," the girl whirled around to face Edmund and Lucy, the two seated on Edmund's bed, hands clasped in laps, "have grievances much the same as I and you," here she turned around and furrowed her brow at her older brother, her blond curls in disarray, "have done nothing but apply useless platitudes!"

"I'll beg your pardon, my lady, but unless your memory is sorely in distress, I am the one who takes care of this family and, unless I myself am mistaken, there is nothing more that we can do. We are stuck here, as stuck as a mountain is to the ground." Peter exclaimed, his tone firm and commanding. Mrs. Pevensie stood stock-still, her eyes growing wide in awe at the resolve that laced through the voice of a boy barely out of earliest childhood. His words confused her too, but she had no time to ponder them as he continued. "Every time we complain, every time one of us whines that we have been thrust back into England without so much as a goodbye, we are tearing His plans asunder. Aslan would not have sent us here without a reason, and all of you know it. His designs demand that we are here, now, and for what purpose I know not but I do know this. We must trust Him. We must hold our heads high. We must—"

"Oh, come off it Peter." Edmund stood from the bed well before Lucy could grab the back of his sweater, though she surely tried. The dark-haired boy once again stood with arms akimbo, his feet firm in stance and his eyes blazing an unnerving gold once more. "I trust Aslan with the heart that beats within mine chest, but your understanding lacks. You are older than us. Your life was not altered as much as the lot of ours. Do you remember our last birthdays? Little Lu, sitting there in a frock and stockings, her hair all done with a bow, was about to turn twenty-four. You yourself were nigh on thirty on that day. You, though, you might have doubled in age and a bit more, but what about us? Lucy spent well over twice her life there as here. England was but a distant memory for us, Pete, and now we've got nowhere else to go."

Peter leaned forward and ran a hand through his corn silk hair. "This is our home now, Ed—"

Her youngest son stomped his foot, and Mrs. Pevensie felt it in the hall. "How can you say that, Peter? How can you say that this is our home when we're treated like children and given the time of day only when it suits others? I remember fond times of being the one whose voice made the hush in a room. I remember when the girls could turn heads just by looking from a window. I remember when you sat at throne, high in your golden chair, and conducted the treaties and declarations of war. How can I not remember the dance of the fauns, the clang of metal as sword met armor in battle, and the heart pangs of loss as comrades-in-arms fell. I remember; did you forget?"

Edmund's words brought a silence to the room that held the story of a thousand lifetimes. She watched as Susan stumbled back to sit by Lucy on the bed, pulling the younger girl into her arms as she began to weep piteously, each quiet sob a stab to her mother's heart. Susan stroked her hair, murmured sweet nothings into her crown, but let her own tears fall freely. Mrs. Pevensie could do little more than hang on the edge of the precipice of not-knowing, unsure if what she'd already heard was enough, or if staying would hurt all the more. Her own eyes were misty from Edmund's speech, though it could only be little more than talk of a game they'd played.

It was several moments before Peter looked up from his lap and locked gazes with his brother, his blue eyes weary and deep, the depths of the oceans where sailors are gone forever. "Edmund, please…"

"I can't, Peter. You know I can't. It's as much my heart as it is yours, and yours, and yours." He looked at his siblings. "I can't forget the place that made me who I am, that is as much a part of my heart as it is my soul. I lived twice as long there as I lived here, and then some. I can't take back what I know to be true, and it is that I do not belong here. None of us do. Aslan's mark has been made; He has claimed us as His own. We can belong to no others, whether they be mortal or of land or sea."

Lucy let out a sob that stilled her mother's breath. "Aslan keep my kin," she cried quietly before burying her head in Susan's arms once more.

"Aslan keep my kin." Edmund repeated. "We are just guests here, Peter. We are no-more permanent than Father is, passing through during the war. We are at war, Pete, and this is just a lull before another storm. Until we find out why Aslan has had us return we cannot let down our guard. Every open cupboard, every ajar wardrobe, and every dark doorway is a gateway home else it has proven itself not to be. "_Eanya nenhind prona_," He said. "You will return." I know," he sighed, "that we all hope to return. I know that we are all waiting. But is it so wrong to wish, and to hope, instead of just waiting?" He begged earnestly.

The oldest boy looked down again, studying the floor. When at last he spoke, his voice was tired but sure, hope flying through the words like a lark on the breeze. "So long as we trust Him, and believe that He will call us home, there is no reason not to hope, and to wish. But every time we deny this as our home in our hearts, we are tearing ourselves from the parents that love us. They may be strangers to us now, but they love us, and we love them. Remember this, all of you, whenever your heart sings of home."

"So says the High King?" Susan questioned softly, the bundle in her arms dashing the tears from her eyes with a trembling hand.

"So says. My queens, my king, let us remember that in Him we are strong; it is when we quarrel that we are furthest from Him." Peter stood and embraced his brother fiercely, then stepped around him to kneel in front of his sisters. "I am sorry, my queens, for upsetting you so, most of all you, my Valiant. Never have I prided myself in possessing words that made you cry." He waited until Susan had pulled back enough to allow him to take his youngest sister against his chest and hug her. Lucy sniffed and hugged him back, mumbling into his shoulder.

"What was that, Lu?" He asked, his lips drawn up in a gentle smile.

"I'm terribly hungry." She replied. The four siblings laughed and hugged one another, their spat all but forgotten.

Mrs. Pevensie pulled away from the door and stared at the wall at the end of the hallway, gaze unfocused. Her children did not own books where any character spoke in such a way as they had just now. Neither had she ever heard her children call each other kings or queens. A game they had made up while bored during their stay in the Professor's dusty old mansion? A game inspired by his many relics of days gone by, swords and suits of armor? She could only wish it to be true because, deep down, she knew it could not be so. Children, especially her children as she knew them to be, did not fall so completely into their imaginations so as to act the part in everyday life. This was something else entirely, something of the sort that she was lacking too much information to explain.

In all truth, she had become a bit more than guilty at listening at the doors of her children. In hindsight, it seemed petty. But the mystery had pulled her in and refused to let go. The next several days were spent outside the doors of the children's rooms, taking care to always have something in hand to make herself appear to only have been passing by if one of them happened to peek out. This happened but once, and Lucy simply gave her a winning smile and skipped down the stairs. This time, though, Mrs. Pevensie knew that Lucy was only smiling for her benefit; she had seen the strain in the young girl's eyes.

Over the course of those days she discovered a thing or two; the children, when not speaking in the language of water, as she was fast coming to call it in her mind, spoke often of a place called Cair Paravel, or more fondly called "The Cair." They also spoke of someone they called Mr. Tumnus, who apparently liked to play the flute and danced quite well, a fact that Lucy expounded upon quite vehemently. The others laughed at her insistence that he was just a bit unsure on his feet sometimes, what with them slipping on the marble floor. Anything else Mrs. Pevensie heard was completely garbled, half English and half water, a combination that confused her all the more.

It should happen that one evening, soon after dinner, the children had split up to finish the day's chores. Peter and Lucy had taken to the dishes while the middle children had set to sweeping and dusting in the parlor. Mrs. Pevensie walked by to replace a fallen coat on the rack but stopped short at Susan's worried voice.

"Why did he come to see you, and not Peter?" she asked, the sound of the dust rag moving across the piano faint through the wall.

"He felt it best to approach me first, lest Peter get angry. He might have, after all, it is his sister." Edmund answered quietly.

Susan hummed in annoyance. "I well understand _that_, Edmund, but what of it that he came to ask you?" The reply she received was nothing more than a mumble, apparently masked in a cough. "Oh, do speak up Ed, I can't hear you for the coughing."

"He was going to…he wanted to marry her." Edmund answered after a long moment.

Susan gasped. "No, truly?" Apparently Edmund nodded, for she continued. "But…did he know that she loved him? That she would have assented without delay?"

The dark-haired boy sighed. "I do not know if he knew, but she did love him. Still does, if the nightmares she awakes from are any indication. He seemed so sure, so earnest – I gave him my blessing without speaking to Peter. I only hoped that he would understand. I guess there's no point to knowing now."

"He was going to ask her that day, wasn't he?" Susan asked, her voice thick. Mrs. Pevensie had to refrain from making a sound at the pain in her daughter's voice. It seemed all the more poignant than it had all those times when she stood in the hall and listened to the girl cry.

"Right after supper. He was going to ask her if she'd like to take a walk in the garden, and propose to her then. But instead we walked back through the wardrobe and never came home. He never knew what happened to her, to us." Edmund replied. His voice, too, sounded thick. He took a deep breath and continued. "She never knew, and I can't bring myself to tell her. She loved him. What would it do to know that they could have been together, but never will?" He asked quietly.

Susan bit back a sob and answered. "It would break her heart. To think of what could have been with Tumnus would break her heart."

One piece of the puzzle fell into place for Mrs. Pevensie, and she smiled just a bit. Her youngest was in love with a boy named Tumnus, who had loved her back. A childhood romance. She listened back to the conversation as Edmund spoke again.

"The oddest thing, though," he said, "is that he never aged. It was as if he stopped the day the Winter started and stayed young since. That was what, over one hundred years?"

Susan hummed in response. "Aye, and at times he seemed almost younger than the day before. He was awful handsome, wasn't he?" When she got no response save for a cough, she laughed. "Oh, it was an objective question Edmund! For being nearly one-hundred and fifty he was well fit. Oh, to think of Lucy, twenty-four, and Tumnus! Aslan must have had a plan in it, for such a love to blossom."

"I'd have been curious to see their children. Do you think they'd have had horns?"

"Edmund!" Susan hissed, laughing quietly.

"It's an honest curiosity! That'd been an odd couple, even for Narnia." Edmund responded with a chuckle.

Susan hummed again. "No stranger than myself and that idiot from Calormen."

"Rabadash?" Edmund asked.

"Yes. He was a dreadful person. I wish he'd have fallen off of his balcony or some such thing while we were there." Susan replied in a huff. Mrs. Pevensie could hear the dust rag being viciously rubbed into the table in the corner.

Edmund chuckled. "Come now Susan, you don't really mean all that."

"Oh, but I do!" Susan whispered angrily. "I have never felt so violated in anyone's presence before. I never stood within ten feet of him and I wanted nothing more than to burn my clothes and scald my skin to get it clean! He was vile!"

There was a patting noise as Edmund comforted his older sister. "We would not have let him touch you, my queen. _He_ would not have let him harm you."

Susan sighed. "I know, but alas I still felt vulnerable." The dust rag was all but thrown through the doorway. "I think we're done in here, don't you?" she asked.

"Aye, I think so too. Oh, and Susan?" Edmund asked slowly.

"Yes, Edmund?"

"Am I right in thinking not to mention anything to Lu?"

Mrs. Pevensie jumped back as Susan appeared at the doorway and paused, turning her back for a moment. "She would be torn to pieces if she knew. I think it's best that she not be told, at least not yet. Wait a few years and if we haven't gone back, maybe then. But right now the pain is too fresh. It will be worse now than later." The mother backed up slowly and before either of her children could see her, she disappeared into the dining room. She closed the door with a quiet click and leaned against it.

A childhood romance had suddenly become much more important in the grand scheme of things. People did not live to be near one-hundred and fifty years old. It simply did not happen, least of all in England. Furthermore, why would the lad her youngest was in love with give her children that had horns? Was he a demon, or did he simply act evil? And who was this boy that Susan had spoken of? A neighbor of the Professor's? Her head spun with questions and none of them had anything that remotely looked like an answer. All she knew now was that, even after all this time, she truly knew nothing.

She did not even know her own children anymore.

Three weeks passed with Edmund and Susan shooting their younger sister sad, pitying looks that she would sometimes ask about, demanding in a voice far more commanding than any other nine-year-old could muster to be told what was going on. Neither of her siblings would answer, and Peter just shook his head. He had, apparently, had no more luck than she at getting an answer from the two. Mrs. Pevensie often found them sitting on the back porch, or in the parlor, discussing Lucy and the boy Tumnus. Lucy continued to babble about him behind (supposedly) closed doors to her siblings, raving about a scarf he had once made her as a gift. Her siblings listened patiently but, later that night, she saw her oldest daughter crying. She watched the girl kneel in her room and begin to pray in the language of water, calling out to Aslan and sobbing sadly.

It was an odd feeling, knowing that if you went to comfort your child, you would cause more trouble than if you simply let her be. Mrs. Pevensie, despite outward appearances, wanted nothing more than for her children to be happy. Every time she saw one of them crying by themselves, or looking sadly at a tree or a carving on a door, she knew that they were pining for something that she did not understand. When they sighed, the heart-sore sound almost made her weep. She wanted to hug them, to hold them, to tell them that it would be alright but she knew that if she exposed herself they would clam up. They spoke the way they did because they thought no one was listening. If they knew that, over the past several months, their mother had been listening to them every day, they would never trust her again. She could not bear to have it.

Everything was soon to fall into place, and Mrs. Pevensie got all the answers she needed one Sunday morning at the beginning of the summer. Her children had come trooping down the stairs all decked out in white. The girls were in dresses with cream sashes, hair curled and the front pinned back. Each held a large, white canvas bag. The boys wore shirts and trousers, their brown shoes polished to a shine. Mrs. Pevensie stood at the foot of the stairs and gazed at them in shock as they trooped down together.

"My, where are you off to this morning?" She asked, still staring at the children as they finally came to the foyer. The three youngest looked at their older brother, who smiled sheepishly.

"We were hoping it would be alright if we went out for a couple of hours." He said casually, but she knew better. Edmund's eyes had taken on the shine of copper again, and for the first time she noticed that her other children's eyes, which were usually a deep blue, were the colour of ice. They were up to something. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Mrs. Pevensie knew that the plan she could feel beginning to form was a complete breach of trust, but she pushed the thought away.

She nodded calmly. "Where will you be headed?"

Peter fumbled with the cuff on his shirt, checking the buttons were firmly set. "Oh, here and there. Nowhere special."

She nodded again. "Alright, but be back before tea time. Do you need anything before you leave?"

All four children shook their heads. "We've got it all right here, Mother." Susan said, holding up her bag.

A moment later the children had slid out the door and closed it firmly. Before she knew what she was doing Mrs. Pevensie stood at the door as well, checking that her hat was not going to fall off and that her dress was neatly pressed. She slipped out the door and locked it behind her, then set off down the sidewalk after her children. She could just see them at the end of the lane, turning to the left and disappearing from sight around the corner of the ice cream shop. She quickened her pace to keep up, lest she lose them.

She knew that following her children was far more worrisome than listening in on their conversations. Following them showed a complete lack of trust, but in truth she did trust them. What it all came down to in the end was that she did not understand them. She wanted so much to understand that she had taken to measures far outside those appropriate for a mother. No mother she knew had ever followed her children when they went out. It simply wasn't done. They made sure to know where their child was off to but never did they follow them.

She expected them to go into the ice cream shop, or into the candy store just a bit down the same street, but the children marched passed with their heads held high and a purpose she was not sure that she was ready to approve of. At one point Susan, walking beside her eldest brother, turned around to say something to Edmund and nearly spotted her. She ducked into the open doorway of a book binder and set out again as soon as she was sure the girl was looking ahead once more. A sigh racked her body and she resettled her hat. This was all beginning to feel a bit ridiculous.

It was not long before the children disappeared around the next corner and Mrs. Pevensie had to rush to catch up to them. She wobbled on her pumps and huffed. It was not too late to turn back, but her curiosity had already gotten the better of her and she knew that, no matter what deterrent rose up to meet her, she would continue to follow her children. She just had to keep them in sight.

Three crosswalks, two more corners and a bridge over a creek later, Mrs. Pevensie was sure that her heart was going to give out. Being a housewife, even the housewife of a military man and the sole manager of her household, had not prepared her for this kind of activity. She simply was not used to it. A grateful sigh escaped her lips when she finally spotted a bench beneath a shady oak. Though afraid of losing sight of them, she knew that sitting down for just a moment was more important than stalking mere children on a wildly suspicious whim.

When next she looked up, the four had vanished. She panicked and scrambled to stand up, one hand on her hat and the other over her pounding heart. A flash of movement through the trees told her all that she needed to know; her children had made their way into the town cemetery. But why?

The cemetery of the small English town was one of the most picturesque that Mrs. Pevensie had ever seen. Tall oaks and the occasional maple tree dotted the field, silent but for the chirping of birds in the branches high overhead. Headstones, some new and others many centuries old, lounged in the shade of the trees and were blanketed, one and all, with a fine film of green moss. As she picked her way among the headstones and tried to remain out of the sight of her four children, Mrs. Pevensie tried in earnest to keep a chill from racing down her spine. Cemeteries had never been a fascination or a place of peace to her. They were a place where people went to sleep forever, their bones decaying and turning to dust under the heavy weight of the earth above.

"This looks as good a place as any." Peter almost-whispered, stopping in a patch of bright sunlight. The others followed his lead and spread out among the nearest headstones. In their white shirts and dresses Mrs. Pevensie thought the four of them looked like angels. She watched from behind a rather sturdy oak as Susan and Lucy carefully knelt, then sat, before a set of headstones that rested side by side. The boys dropped to one knee on either side of their sisters, Peter next to Susan and Edmund beside Lucy. Her youngest daughter set her bag on her lap and pulled out a bouquet of white roses, carefully separating a single stem from the bunch. Slowly, and with a look of intense concentration, she placed it on top of the headstone before her.

Everything was quiet for a long while. The birds stopped their singing and the breeze in the branches of the trees overhead slowed. Time might have stopped if it were not for the gentle dappling of the sunlight on the ground, undulating with every minute quiver of the leaves. As the minutes stretched on Lucy slowly lowered her head, followed by Peter, Susan, and finally Edmund. Her hands came to rest in her lap and she began to speak quietly.

"In you, Johnathan Louis Knowle, I honor the beavers, kind creatures who left safety and comfort behind to aid our country in its greatest need. In Knowle you are honoured, so that we might know that you one day shall rest peacefully under pure Narnian soil while your soul crosses the seas to the Eastern Shore. May Aslan watch over and protect you."

"May Aslan watch over and protect you." The others echoed solemnly.

Mrs. Pevensie watched as each of her children said a similar prayer. Susan prayed in the name of Christopher Malcolm for something called a centaur by the name of something that rhymed with "silver," Peter prayed for "his men" in the name of Adam Young, and Edmund, last of all, prayed for "Aravis" in the name of one Jack Lewis.

This continued for some time. When each of her children had said a word for someone, in turn, they would rise and go to another group of headstones and sit before them regally, and start their prayers over again. Each time they did this Mrs. Pevensie held her breath and hid behind her tree, afraid that they would come her way and pass her, only to find out what a snoop she had become. Mercifully they made their way deeper into the cemetery at each turn.

By the time the sun had crested in the sky, the children seemed to have come to the end of their prayers. Together they stood from the four headstones they had been sitting before and approached two stones capped by impressive statues, one of a lion and the other of a mythical creature that Mrs. Pevensie could not place. Lucy knelt at the foot of the creature and Peter at the foot of the lion and bowed their heads, their siblings behind them.

"In you, Johann Stace, I honor the faun Tumnus, the kindest of all Aslan's creatures, who risked his life to save me and my own, who braved death to aid his country. A greater man Narnia may never have known. As Stace was loved in life, so know you too are loved. In Stace you are honoured, so that we might know that you shall one day rest peacefully under pure Narnian soil while your soul crosses the seas to the Eastern Shore. May Aslan watch over and protect you."

As Lucy finished a tear rolled down her cheek. She did nothing to wipe it away. Her back to them, Susan and Edmund did not see. Peter, his eyes closed, did not make any indication that he had noticed. He began to speak.

"In you, Nicolas Langford, the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, once rulers of Narnia and souls that have Narnian hearts within their chests and Narnian blood within their veins, honor and praise He who gave it all to save them and theirs, the great Aslan, King of all Narnia and all Beasts and the Prince of the land which lies Over-the-Sea. Not once may we deny You the right to our lives and our hearts, for Your heart beats within ours, and our hearts beat only for You. We have been…" he paused and his eyelids fluttered as he paused in thought, "…troubled by our return to England and our sudden separation from You, O Aslan. Though our faith in You and our love for You has never faded, our strength wavers. Our memories of You and of Narnia have become clouded, lit by a light that feels false. We find that we can't remember as well as we once could, cannot feel the kiss of the Narnian sun when we close our eyes, cannot recall the exact taste of the pastries we had for breakfast every morning. Should we worry? Should we fear?

"O Aslan, nearly our whole lives were spent in Your kingdom. Coming back here, everything is like a bad dream. Children again, after reigning as kings and queens for bearing on two decades. Children, told what to do and when to speak. Made to dress like infants, like dolls. All petty things, we know, but still it irks us so! We hear Your voice from where we are, but it is a whisper rather than a roar, Your touch a light brush and less of a loving embrace. Please, Aslan, give us a sign that You are with us, give us a sign that You are still here. We need You now more than ever, in this time of such strife and turmoil. War here, an unknown future back in Narnia, we are lost.

"A sign, O Aslan, and nothing more. A touch upon our hearts, a whisper of Your presence. We love and adore You, O Aslan. May Your blessings continue to be with us, and Your love follow us wherever we go."

After a long moment Peter raised his chin and opened his eyes, looking up at the trees behind the statuary of the lion. Mrs. Pevensie, still leaning up against her tree and trying hard as she could to remain unseen, realized that she had been holding her breath for quite some time and let it out in a shaky sigh. She watched as her other children slowly raised their faces to the sun and a light breeze ruffled all their hair.

A loud roar split the air and sent the birds squawking from the trees overhead. Mrs. Pevensie had to stifle a scream but, to her amazement, the children did not so much as jump. Instead they smiled brightly and Lucy even closed her eyes and turned her face toward the sky. The sunlight streaming down through the trees brightened till it was almost painful and a wind swirled around the children, whipping their hair into their faces and stirring up the leaves on the ground. A single beam of light fell from above, illuminating a patch of grass right behind the two statues.

Mrs. Pevensie was frightened. At first she had been amazed, but nothing about what was happening seemed even the least bit normal. In fact, if she hadn't known any better, she'd have thought she was dreaming. She pressed herself against her tree and peered around to behind the headstones. Her breath caught in her throat.

A lion, a real, honest to goodness lion, half as big as an elephant and at least the size of the greatest draft horse, came prowling out of the shadows. Its supper-plate paws padded noiselessly on the grass, crushing the blades and sending up little clouds of dust. The scent of spring, of flowers and sweet things, filled the air. The lion swung its great head toward her and looked at her with wise, deep eyes, filling her with a sense of peace. A voice, a deep rumble of a voice, whispered in her ear, "Fear no longer for them, My child, for they are with Me."

The lion padded toward the children, a sound like purring coming from his throat. "My children," he said, "why have you lost faith in Me?"

Lucy, having stood to approach the lion, took a step back. Her bottom lip quivered and her brothers and sister bowed their heads, their faces a storm of shame.

"O Aslan, we tried but it was so hard, and never did we lose faith in You, honest, we-"

The lion growled softly and Lucy fell silent, lowering her gaze. He (for Mrs. Pevensie was sure that it was a male lion) padded closer and leaned down to look her youngest daughter in the face. "Little Valiant, wipe your tears, if you had stumbled so as to have lost all faith, I'd not be here now. No, little one, you have only faltered, have only tripped as you ran. You can get back up and follow Me." He breathed on her face and she looked up, smiling, before burying her hands and face in his golden main.

"Was it I who caused us to stumble, O Aslan?" Edmund asked, looking at the lion, tear-tracks running down his face.

"Not you, Just one, you learned your lesson most well the first time. It is not in your heart to leave the path that I have set before you."

"Was it I?" asked Susan. She kept her gaze lowered. The lion, Aslan, leaned against her and breathed on her hair.

"Dear Susan, My Gentle queen, set your heart again to a calmer pace. I have come to blame no one, to judge no one. Be still, My child."

"Aslan, was it I?" Peter asked in the quietest of voices. He met Aslan's gaze and looked down, tears coming to his eyes. Aslan, as with his siblings, breathed on his head and gazed at the boy till he raised his face once more.

"Did not you hear what I told your brother and sisters? Blame and judgment shall not fall from My lips to-day." The great lion growled deep in his chest even as the four children gathered closer to him, touching his back and stroking his mane. "My children, when have I led you astray, when have I abandoned you? Never. I was always with you, whether in Narnia or here, so far from home. Remember this, My children, remember this in the coming days and months and years, when you dream of Narnia and think it only a dream, when a face or a voice or a memory is too dim to recall. Remember Me, remember My promises. You will find them always in your hearts."

Peter raised his head from the Lion's mane and gazed into His deep, wise eyes with a look of complete devotion. "We shall, O Aslan."

"So declares the High King?" Lucy asked, looking around the great Lion's chest with a cheeky grin. Peter, his eyes bright, smiled back at her.

"It is so."

"My children, My Kings and Queens," Aslan began, the purr in His voice back once again. "I must leave you now. It is time that I returned to my Father."

"But You mustn't!" Lucy cried, burying her face in Aslan's mane once more. "You just got here!"

"Come now little one, you must have known that I could not stay for long. After all," He laughed, "I am not a tame Lion."

The children laughed, though their eyes shined with tears, and with a last Lion's kiss on their heads stepped back from Aslan. He inclined His great head and each child in turn bowed deeply to Him. With a roar so loud that it shook the very ground, He was off into the trees, disappearing from sight as quickly as He had appeared.

"I think it's time we went back. Mother will be getting worried about us." Edmund said after a while, all of the children having stood gazing a long time after the great Lion.

"Let's, it must be near teatime." Susan replied. She picked her bag up from the ground and sat it upon her shoulder as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. The others did the same and returned to the cemetery path.

Mrs. Pevensie, no longer caring if her children saw her, watched as they walked passed. Not one of them noticed her there, watching then from beside a towering oak. She gazed at them in awed silence as the sunlight broke through the trees and the beams fell over the children's shoulders and heads, casting their crowns aglow and creating cloaks from rays of light. Never had she seen anyone or anything so wonderful and fantastic, so wont to set her heart racing and her eyes to pricking. They walked out of the light and once more appeared as normal children, then disappeared down the path and she fell to her knees and wept for the kings and queens that she never knew.

**AN:** IT'S DONE! Thanks to anyone who read this entire thing. It was a labor of love for me, of trying to put into words what kept popping into my head as pictures and feelings.

Thanks also to my lovely beta, Demon-Panda, for reading this over and over and pointing out what I'd fudged up. You're a lifesaver, dear!

PS: If anyone wants to know why the capitalization of the personal pronouns attached to Aslan (like he, me, my, you, etc) changes throughout the story, it's because the children all speak of Aslan as He or Him, but it's not till the end that Mrs. Pevensie comes to the same knowledge as them. I don't know, it's just how it worked out.


End file.
